Description of Research Expertise

I am an established investigator with a career long commitment to translational musculoskeletal research and in particular research focused on cartilage and chondrocyte biology, extracellular matrix and research related to osteoarthritis. Fundamentally, my research addresses the translational area of degenerative joint diseases and focuses on extracellular matrix, cartilage cell biology, cartilage tissue engineering, and cartilage response to injury. A graduate of McGill University under the mentorship of Professor A. Robin Poole formed a solid basis for a career in studying cartilage and joint-related diseases. I also trained in the labs of recognized leaders in matrix biology (Professors R Iozzo and S Jimenez at Jefferson Medical College) and have continued to work in the area of cartilage biology for more than 25 years. Significant accomplishments include Dodge and Poole being among the first to describe a new approach to use antibodies to degrade fragments of extracellular matrix as biomarkers and to identify arthritic diseases and tissue turnover; an area of study and much interest still today. Additionally, Dodge and Iozzo were the first to characterize a novel and important heparan sulfate proteoglycan, perlecan and were the team that originally identified and characterized the human perlecan gene. This molecule has gone on to be identified as critical to many fundamental processes such as skeletal development, angiogenesis, growth factor deliver, and cartilage homeostasis.

More recently, with a focus on cartilage tissue structure and function paradigms, my work has concentrated on developing innovative technologies of tissue engineering and phenotypically correct models of cartilage-like functional units. My laboratory has been a forerunner in the area of scaffold-free tissue engineering cartilage and recently published a study that clearly demonstrated our novel scaffold-less model can generate functionally relevant cartilage tissue analogs (Mohanraj B et al., J Biomechanics 2014). We have focused over the past several years on developing this platform as a generator of cartilage surrogates which also included novel approaches to grow these tissue surrogates in a pressurized bioreactor delivering a physiologically relevant load. I have combined the experiences of cartilage cell biology and tissue engineering and designed a bioreactor that can deliver physiologically relevant loads and mimic pathological stress or injury on growing cartilage analogs generated from both chondrocytes and stem cells. This provides a physiological-relevant platform to explore the mechanisms of various cell functions and how to control them.

My current goals important to traumatic injuries to cartilage, (i.e., PTOA) which is to identify molecules involved in chondroctye's early response to compressive injury and identify in a high throughput manner, therapeutics targets. A significant advance in the potential to discover therapeutics in this clinical area has been achieved by our success in creating a PTOA injury model platform that was designed to rapidly assess small molecules and drug’s effects on cell after a compressive injury (B Mohanraj et al., OA & Cart 2014).

Complementing molecular and cell biology expertise, my lab has extensive experience incorporating novel imaging approaches into our research including FT-IRIS, MRI, and CT which has direct implications when considering assessing later engineered materials in vivo. We also made a significant advance in the area of imaging as a biomarker, with a study demonstrating in an animal model the use of MRI as a biomarker for early detection of cartilage changes and its ability to detect the progressive damage that occurs over time (Fenty M et al., J Mag Res Imaging 2012). As demonstrated here, I have a broad range of translational orthopaedic based research interests and nurtured innovative collaborations with biologists, engineers and clinicians which have implications in a variety of clinical areas. A cross-disciplinary approach continues to be the cornerstone of my research agenda.